Author: Anna Ferri

I tend to be a person who likes to follow the rules, whether legal or simply just moral. In class, when we were asked our personal stance on the ethics of marketing, I was quick to explain my stance. Frankly, I do believe that it would be difficult for me to work for an organization that was creating, conducting, or participating in unethical or immoral work. It’s hard to say what my actual response would be if one of my first clients at an agency was a controversially negative one. However, I believe that there are seriously problematic clients, for example a company that is known for their deforestation and ecological destruction. There is a clean line with regard to that company. They are doing something that is socially very frowned upon. On the other hand, there are other categories that don’t necessarily seem so bad, until you really do your research.

The Hershey’s Company has an incredible amount of brands to market and advertise for within the company, giving great variety (and sometimes similarity) with the campaigns that they run. The first campaign that I analyzed for this post was a campaign done on Facebook (and Instagram) for the new Reese Snack Mix, called Reese Mix. This new product by The Hershey’s Company is a sweet mix of Reese Peanut Butter Cups minis, Reese’s Pieces candies, along with pretzels and peanuts. As a whole, this using this network for this campaign increased the ad recall by an impressive 28 points. It was also able to increase Reese Mix brand awareness by 11 points, making this a very successful advertising campaign.

For my analysis of a newspaper or magazine advertisement in my field, I chose a magazine advertisement for the grocery company Publix, a south based company. This advertisement shows the visual elements of ripe blueberries along with freshly baked blueberry muffins. There is also a small description, also known as the body copy, of why Publix food and groceries are so fresh. They explain that they are focused on staying with their roots, which includes buying produce that has been raised locally and in the south. This advertisement uses an indirect headline, or a headline that is not very straightforward or very informative to the viewer. The headline reads, “True blue local flavor,” which doesn’t tell the reader much, but it draws them in due to the combination of the imagery and the interest of the words themselves.

When thinking that I would have to analyze a grocery store television commercial for this blog post, I was thinking it would be bland, boring, and purely based on the product benefits of the grocery store that I chose, however, that is not exactly what I got. The Hannaford grocery store advertisement that I chose to analyze ties together grocery shopping with the meditation, enlightenment and zen (all presented with the essence of humor). The shopper is having is a . This correlation was interesting due to the fact that most people find their relationship with their grocery store brand to be one based on the “product benefits,” or solely based on what the grocery store can provide to the them. I believe what Hannaford is trying to do for their company is create a personality to their brand. Through this advertisement, and other similar advertisements, Hannaford is trying to give their brand a unique persona, something that usually is not associated with the world of grocery stores.